Wednesday, August 1, 2012

David Parker Ray: The Toy Box Killer

Truth or Consequences

The young woman running down the dirt road was completely naked
and moving as fast as she could. Stones in the road must have hurt her
bare feet, but she believed she was running for her life. No matter what
it took, Cynthia V. was bent on escape.

Map of New Mexico with Elephant Butte locator

It was late afternoon on March 22, 1999, but not excessively
cold as she fled through the New Mexico desert near the Sierra Caballo
Mountains. A woman driving by saw Cynthia screaming, locked her car door
and sped away. Cynthia did not realize how she looked, with blood
streaming from a head wound, a metal collar padlocked around her neck,
and a chain dangling behind. A man in a second car swerved to avoid her
and also drove away. Her plight felt hopeless. While she came upon small
homes and trailers along the road, they seemed locked up and she
thought she dare not take the time to stop and knock, just in case they were behind her.

Book cover: Cries in the Desert

Then she spotted a well-kept mobile home, writes John Glatt in Cries in the Desert,
and to her great relief, the door was open. She bounded over, rushed
inside, slammed the door shut, and begged the surprised woman watching
television to help her.
The homeowner hurried to help when she saw
how seriously Cynthia was hurt. Blood caked her hair, and there were
blood droplets on her face and terrible bruises all over her body. As
Cynthia locked the door, the homeowner called 911 and then retrieved a
robe for the naked girl. Cynthia, only 22, was stunned to learn that she
was about 150 miles south of where she lived in Albuquerque. She was in
Elephant Butte, a resort town of approximately 2,000 residents that sat
above an 18-mile-long, 36,000-acre reservoir.
Two police officers
responded to the call, whereupon Cynthia cried hysterically, "I'm
alive! I'm alive!" She tried to calm herself, although it was difficult,
and told them she'd been kidnapped by a man who, with a woman, had held
her prisoner in a trailer nearby. For three days they had tortured her
with a bizarre collection of sexual and medical instruments. She'd only
just managed to get away.
The male abductor had left the trailer
not long ago, charging the woman with looking after Cynthia, but when
she had gone to another room, Cynthia had grabbed the set of keys that
hung just within reach and unlocked the chain that fastened her to a
pole. Then she spotted a phone and attempted to dial 911, but the woman
returned and threw a lamp at her, hitting her on the head. Cynthia fell
down while the woman hung up the phone to cut off the call, but she
quickly recovered. A box of items that spilled over contained an ice
pick the couple had used on her, so she grabbed it to defend herself.
The woman backed off, giving Cynthia the brief opportunity to rush for
the door. She fled without her clothing, certain if she stayed a moment
longer she'd never emerge.
Cynthia told the officers the location
of the trailer, but, in fact, another team was already on it. A 911 call
had just come in from that location, 513 Bass Road, but had been
interrupted. The dispatcher believed that a struggle had taken place, so
police had gone to check it out.
Cynthia was taken to a hospital,
and she reported that her abductors had used her as a sex slave and
probably had intended to kill her. She had the bruises and burn marks
from electrical torture on her body to prove it, which hospital
personnel documented with photographs. The details she spilled out were
almost too gruesome to believe, but there was one sure way to verify her
account: conduct a search. The local police had no idea just then how
big this investigation would become, how disturbing, or how frustrating.

Desert Fantasies

Cynthia was aware that some of the details she related might
seem hard to credit, yet she was able to show them the welts on her
back, punctures on her breasts, cuts, bruises, and a recent bump on her
head. She had met her abductor, she admitted, while working as a
prostitute in Albuquerque. Vernon Geberth offers the details in Sex-Related Homicide and Death Investigation.
The man, David Parker Ray, had offered her $20 for oral sex in his
Toyota RV. Cynthia climbed into the cab, where she encountered Cindy Lea
Hendy, Ray's live-in girlfriend. Cynthia sensed a trap, but then Ray
flashed a badge and told her she was under arrest for solicitation.

Book cover: Sex-Related Homi-cide and Death Investigation

As they bound and gagged her, she realized they were not
police at all, but intended to kidnap her. They placed duct tape over
her mouth and locked a steel collar around her neck, and drove for
several hours with her in the back. There was nothing she could do to
resist. When they stopped, they took her into a double-wide trailer and
chained her to a post next to a bed. Apparently, it was where they
lived. Soon, she said, they had played a twenty-minute tape for her that
informed her of what was in store: she was now their sex slave and she
could expect a great deal of abuse: among other things, she would have
sex with animals, the taped voice told her, be forcibly raped with
dildos, have her nipples stretched to the fullest extent they would go,
and give oral sex to Ray whenever he demanded it. She was also told that
other women before her had died.

David Parker Ray

They applied a series of electrical and medical
instruments to different areas of her body, ignoring her muffled moans
of pain and the pleas in her eyes to be released, and she was certain
they meant to use her as long as possible and then kill her. They
suspended her from the ceiling, whipped her, and threatened her with a
gun. Ray had raped her repeatedly as well, and done other things to
humiliate her. He had told her that he had a secure room in which he had
more extreme implements and that she would soon be taken there. She
looked for some possible way to escape before she was ever subjected to
this: to her mind, that secure room would be her tomb.

Cindy Lea Hendy

The officers responding to the interrupted 911 call
apprehended David Parker Ray, 59, and his girlfriend, Cindy Lea Hendy,
39, in their Toyota RV as they were leaving the trailer. Both were
arrested and taken to the police department, where they gave matching
statements: they had been trying to help Cynthia kick a terrible heroin
habit. Although the case thus far was now largely a matter of "he-said,
she-said," the officers weren't willing to turn these two potential
offenders loose until they sorted out the facts. A background check
indicated that Ray was a mechanic with the state parks department, which
gave him access to a wide swath of state land. In itself, that was not
troubling, unless he had in fact killed people.The
state police quickly secured a warrant to look for the items the victim
had told them about, as well as evidence of her being there. If they
could find the tapes, whips, and other implements, this would be clearly
not a case of a pair of friends helping another kick a drug habit. Yet
what Cynthia had described hardly prepared them for what they found.

The Toy Box

Inside the trailer, investigators discovered a gun and a
broken lamp matching Cynthia's description of the one used to strike
her, and the clear evidence of a recent struggle. They also came across
the fake police badge Ray had used and his instructions to Hendy for
watching the victim while he was away. The clothing that Cynthia had
been wearing when Ray and Hendy had picked her up was there as well, as
was an assortment of medical devices, just as Cynthia had described,
along with items used to administer electrical shock. In addition, the
police found the pole to which she had been chained and the ice pick
she'd used to confront her abductor. They also discovered the audiotape
used to terrorize Cynthia and its contents, recorded in 1993, were just
as grim and terrifying as she had described.

Inside the trailer used by Ray to torture his victims

Next to the double-wide trailer was a smaller one, of a
type generally used for moving cargo. This was apparently the "secure
room" where Cynthia feared she would die. Geberth provides photos of the
contents of what Ray called his "toy box." The space was
fifteen-by-twenty-five feet entirely devoted to sexual torture. Ray had
drawn pictures of what he planned to do to the victims, and to
accomplish his visions he had gathered a number of surgical instruments
to inflict different types of torment. He also used medical manuals,
specifically devoted to female anatomy. He also had a home-made
electrical device that was clearly intended for inflicting pain, and a
number of syringes and means of keeping a person under restraint. Then
there were obvious sexual implements, such as large dildos, belts and
whips. There was also a home video of the couple applying these
implements to a woman, who seemed terrified. It was uncomfortable to
watch her scream as Ray methodically threatened and hurt her."Ray
placed a TV monitor in the right-hand corner of the trailer," Geberth
writes, "so his victims, who were secured to the chair as he tortured
them, could see what he was doing to them by looking at the monitor. He
had a video camera focused on the gynecology chair to view his
operations." Ray had the whole place rigged with a series of chains and
pulleys. He also had drawings of things he wanted to do, as well as
photographs of the torture he'd inflicted on other women. In addition,
he had a series of dolls strung up in various states of bondage and
torture. Among his texts, says Geberth, was a copy of American Psycho
by Brett Easton Ellis, a novel that details the violent assaults a man
inflicts on his victims whenever he needs to blow off some steam from
his high-stress life. Like its lead character, Ray viewed himself as a
man in command and thought of his victims as expendable pawns in his
game; he referred to them as "packages."Among the
more interesting items, supposedly based on his years of experience, was
a page of directions that Ray had apparently written for how to handle a
sex slave. Bondage was a must, of course, and the neck collar was
considered permanent. He included methods of psychological torture,
including a blindfold and a slow, deliberate approach. Verbal abuse was
part of every move, including putting the slave in the right positions
as he told her what he was going to do, and it was important to prevent
her from thinking too much. "Keep her off balance," the list read, as
well as emphasizing the importance of keeping both her mind and body in a
state of stress. The point was to make her docile and willing to do
what she was told. He had a list of sixteen techniques for brainwashing
someone, which included isolation, fear tactics, abuse, and occasional
small favors — the best way to make a slave malleable. She never knew
what to expect.Ray's Toyota RV, too, yielded
evidence, as it was soon clear that the restraints that Cynthia recalled
were there, permanently attached. The police also found duct tape and
items used to make the RV appear to be an official police vehicle.Ray
and Hendy were both detained and charged with 12 counts, including
kidnapping, aggravated battery and conspiracy. Their bail was set at $1
million each. But even with this evidence, it would not be easy to nail
them. Yet the media got wind of the incident and reporters were soon
arriving, detailing everything they could learn about the sexual
torture.

The Dungeon Master

Ray described himself on an audiotape found among his
effects as a "dungeon master" with an affiliation with the Church of
Satan. His sex slaves were not just for his own use, he said, but for
all members of his congregation. In other words, the woman forced to
listen to this was made to believe she would be repeatedly raped and
abused by many others who indulged in some of the most sadistic
amusements a human could devise. For every threat Ray made on the tapes,
he had an instrument to carry it out—the same approach used by Cameron
Hooker, who had kept a sex slave for years in Oregon.

Cameron Hooker

From the victim's account, detectives learned that she
had been tied up in such a way to keep her legs open as wide as possible
and then subjected to a series of humiliations, as well as shocks from
cattle prods and stun guns. She had been forced to submit to the
insertion of oversized dildos and placed at times inside a coffin-like
box. All the while, Hendy had watched. She had made no move to help.
Instead, she had appeared to be enjoying the show. Ray also had
photographed some of the things he had done, for his records and
probably for later delectation.

FBI team searches Ray's trailer and property

The search team had a huge task ahead, collecting each
item and labeling it. The evidence had to be handled carefully and in
such a way that none would be thrown out of court. They believed that
Ray was a serial offender, possibly a serial killer, and they wanted to
be sure to put him away. New Mexico Public Safety Director Darren White
told reporters, "This is very disturbing stuff." What he'd seen inside
the Toy Box had "literally made my stomach turn." Although authorities
were reluctant to give out details, White assured worried residents that
the nightmare was behind bars.Lawyers appointed to both defendants stated that they would enter "not guilty" pleas at the arraignments.Hungry
for further details, reporters fanned out around the area, learning
from those who knew Ray that he seemed like a regular guy. No one
reported having any trouble with him. He had no criminal record, and
there had never been any suspicions about what he might be doing on his
property, which he leased from the park service. But the darker hints
coming from the police indicated that he was a lot worse than he seemed.

Another Victim

Photos and videos found among the items in the Toy Box
showed a victim, bound and subjected to torture. This corroborated
Cynthia's story about similar things done to her, but did not yet prove
it had been against her will. That she had worked as a prostitute would
diminish her credibility, the prosecutors knew. They hoped they could
find this other woman and get her story if she was still alive.Soon
the case against Ray gained additional strength. When the incident was
reported in newspapers, Angelica M. from nearby Truth or Consequences (T
or C) came forward to say that she'd suffered a similar ordeal at the
hands of this couple just the month before. She was not the woman in the
video, so she was yet a third possible victim. She was an acquaintance
of the defendants, she said, and she had entered their home on February
17 looking for cake mix. Ray had left and come back with a knife,
informing her that she was being kidnapped. She had looked over at Hendy
and had seen her holding a gun. She knew then that they were serious.They
grabbed her, bound her, and stripped her. Harnessing her onto a table,
they then placed a metal collar on her, attached electrodes to her
breasts, and jolted her with severe electrical shocks and abused her
with various sexual implements. Then Ray forced her to give him oral
sex. This ordeal went on for three days, she claimed, at which point,
she was taken from the main trailer to a smaller one and strapped to a
chair. They ran electrical currents through her body, shocking her
repeatedly in her most sensitive areas. She begged the couple to release
her.Finally on the fourth day of her ordeal, she
managed to persuade them to let her go. They had taken her miles away
and dumped her out on a local highway, out in the desert, where a police
officer picked her up. She'd reported what had happened to her, but the
report was apparently filed without follow-up. Now that Ray and Hendy
had been charged with criminal behavior in a similar incident, she had
decided to pursue her case. They received more charges, now totaling 25.
When reporters pressed, officials were unable to provide details about
why Hendy and Ray had not been investigated or arrested in February. But
investigators from many jurisdictions were taking it seriously now.After
searching the double-wide trailer, the police turned their attention to
the half-acre lot on which the trailer stood. They found bone
fragments, but they proved to be from animals, not humans. By April 1,
the FBI had 100 agents on the job, fanning out into Arizona and Texas
searching for potential victims and witnesses. Leads took agents to
Phoenix, Tucson, El Paso and even into Juarez, Mexico. The tourist town
of Truth or Consequences, about seven miles from Ray's trailer, became
the headquarters for law enforcement and media alike."There's much more to this case than is publicly known," Special Agent Doug Beldon said to The Washington Post,
"or otherwise they wouldn't have this kind of manpower invested in it."
The FBI had given the case the highest priority, even sending profilers
from the Behavioral Analysis Unit. The assumption was that Ray had a
lengthy history of abuse and was practiced at it, and that the case
could very well be worse than anyone yet knew. In addition, he had an
accomplice with her own strange past.

The Accomplice

It turned out that Cindy Hendy was from Seattle, where her
three children lived. She had moved to New Mexico to avoid arrest for
forgery, theft, and possession of drugs. Reporters dug up a court report
from the previous year in which Hendy had charged a former boyfriend
with abuse, but then had told the court to disregard her complaint. "I
am so sorry that I lied," she had stated. "I have been in counseling for
manic depression."

Cindy Hendy

It also came to light that Hendy had told a friend,
under the influence of alcohol, that she'd participated in Ray's attacks
because it gave her an "adrenaline rush." She confided to this person
that there were four to six people who had been killed, dismembered, and
tossed into Elephant Butte Lake. He didn't quite believe her, but he
later told the police and also gave statements to several reporters.Hendy,
it turned out, was willing to deal. In exchange for a considerably
reduced sentence, she provided details of Ray's alleged murders, which
totaled 14 (not 40, as some accounts have it). According to what she
said he told her, he had once killed a business partner from Phoenix,
Billy Bowers, but when he dumped the body into the lake, it had come
back up (a murder that was unsolved at the time of his arrest). Thus, he
had learned to open the stomachs of people he killed so they would
submerge easily in a lake and stay down.Hendy
claimed that Ray had disposed of many of the bodies in the lake and in
ravines around south-central New Mexico. He'd been questioned by the FBI
in some of the cases, but had always been clever enough to fool them
(according to Hendy). Authorities followed leads in ten different
states, using ground-penetrating radar and cadaver sniffing dogs, but
found no bodies.

Glenda "Jesse" Ray

Hendy also revealed that Ray's daughter, Glenda "Jesse"
Ray, had participated with Ray and a man from T or C named Dennis Roy
Yancy in the murder of a young woman. The victim's name was Marie B.
Parker and when she went missing she was 22. She was also the mother of
two young children. Investigators soon located Yancy, 27, and brought
him in for questioning.

A Killer Breaks Down

Informally, Yancy offered information about the
sadomasochistic acts he had witnessed and in which he had sometimes
participated at Ray's trailer. He implicated Ray's daughter in this
activity and described pictures he had seen of Ray's former wife in
bondage positions. He had also watched Ray torture a girl inside the Toy
Box, but insisted that she had consented. Nevertheless, Jesse Ray had
allegedly told him that her father had kidnapped women for S&M sex.

Dennis Roy Yancy

In a second interview, Yancy changed his tune. He stated
that he did know of Marie Parker, who had been killed. In fact, she was
his former girlfriend. On July 5, 1997, he'd gone with Ray and Jesse to
a saloon for what he thought was a drug deal. Father and daughter went
in and returned with Marie. They placed her in handcuffs and warned her
if she talked they'd kill her. Yancy was told to stay with her in the
rear of the vehicle. They then took Marie to the Toy Box and Yancy
considered calling the police but thought better of it. He was afraid of
Ray.He knew that the girl was held for three days,
being repeatedly tortured, and then Ray and Jesse came to Yancy and told
him they were "done with her." They gave Yancy a rope and instructed
him to strangle her, which he admitted he did. They then went together
to dump the body in a remote area, after which Ray threatened Yancy with
the same fate if he ever told.When he attempted to
show law enforcement where the body was, he was unable to locate the
exact place. (It was also possible that Ray had moved the body, worried
that Yancy might crack.) On April 10, 1999, Yancy was booked on
suspicion of murder. He was also charged with kidnapping, evidence
tampering, and conspiracy. His case ended with two sentences of fifteen
years each for one count of second-degree murder and one count of
conspiracy to commit first-degree murder. The sentences were to run
consecutively.Since Hendy had given details to help
on these cases, the charges against her were reduced from 25 to five
counts of conspiracy and being an accessory. She pleaded no contest in
exchange for a sentence of 36 years.

The Girl in the Video

After reading the continuing coverage, the mother-in-law of a
woman, married only a few days to her son, came forward to tell the
police about how the girl had gone missing for three days. She had come
back disheveled and unable to explain herself. They had assumed she was
on drugs, so they asked her to leave, which she did. She ended up in
Colorado.The police located her and she was
identified as the woman in the videotape who was being tortured and
assaulted, seemingly against her will. Her tattoos matched those of the
woman. However, she only had fragmented memories of what had happened.
She did remember Jesse Ray and being taken to a trailer. Ray had
threatened her with a knife, she said, while Jesse restrained her. She
was stripped and tied onto a bench in a small room, and she accurately
recalled items from the Toy Box; she also remembered being subjected to
several types of sexual assault. She was then taken out and dropped off
near her in-laws' home, disoriented. She could barely recall what had
happened.

Glenda "Jesse" Ray

On April 26, Glenda Jean "Jesse" Ray was arrested and
charged with kidnapping women for sexual torture. More charges were
added to Ray's, now totaling 37 counts. At Jesse Ray's arraignment, her
lawyer, Billy Blackburn, entered a "not guilty" plea. He stated that she
"vehemently, adamantly denies" any such involvement with her father,
and predicted that many more people would be arrested before the case
was over. One newspaper reported that Jesse had told the police thirteen
years earlier that her father had abducted and sold women in Mexico,
but no victims were identified and apparently there was no record of
this report.Regardless of how many accomplices Ray
did or did not have, he was quickly diagnosed by FBI profilers as a
criminal sexual sadist.

The Sadist

Peter Kürten, the Vampire of Düsseldorf

Karl Berg wrote a book called The Sadist about serial
killer Peter Kürten, and it was one of the first psychiatric works
devoted to the subject of a person who tortures others for his own
pleasure. (Kürten would chew on his victims during sex, killing them.)
The word derives from the 19th century work of Richard von Krafft-Ebing, in his book Psychopathia Sexualis,
in which he set out to collect various sexual crimes into medical
categories. He based the concept of deriving pleasure from humiliating
or inflicting pain on other sentient beings on the writings of the
eighteen-century Marquis de Sade, whose philosophical pornography
detailed violent sexual episodes, including murder. Krafft-Ebing thought
that sadism in males was a distortion of the sexual instinct, and he
was so certain it was exclusive to males that he never studied female
sadists.

Drawing of young Marquis de Sade, by Van Loo

In Hickey's Sex Crimes and Paraphilia, Lisa Shaffer
and Julie Penn spell out the nature of the paraphilia known as sadism.
They indicate that it may or may not involve consent, and for some
offenders it's definitely more exciting to inflict pain on nonconsensual
victims. Most sadists begin as masochists, these authors say, who are
aroused by the receipt of pain or humiliation. They then move into a
dominating role and find they prefer it. Some even develop such a hunger
for sadistic arousal that they become rapists and murderers. Among the
most notable examples, besides Ray, are Robert Berdella, who tortured
young men before killing them, and the Canadian team of Paul Bernardo
and Karla Homolka, who killed three young women. They kept two as
temporary sex slaves.

Karla Homolka and Paul Bernardo on their wedding day

The types of activities sadists enjoy include whipping,
handcuffing people, hanging them, choking victims into unconsciousness
and then reviving them, stomping on them, using substances to induce
altered states of consciousness, electrocuting, piercing, raping,
cutting, and keeping them imprisoned. They might also enjoy inflicting
humiliations such as covering victims in excrement. Some sadists even
hire themselves out to masochists to inflict a controlled, choreographed
scenario.
While there are differing opinions on this condition,
and its causes remain obscure, it appears to form during certain
associations in adolescence. Even so, more than one-third of people with
this condition report discovering their condition well into adulthood;
they enjoy the feeling of power and authority that arises from having
their way with a vulnerable human being. There is no known effective
therapy for those who compulsively harm others in a nonconsensual,
illegal manner.
Ray had yet to be convicted, but one FBI agent who
had seen the contents of Ray's Toy Box stated that the time, money and
effort spent on building up his extensive and varied inventory supported
the fact that he was among the most extreme of sexual sadists. It was
time to get him into court.

Jinxed

State District Judge Neil Mertz made the decision to have
Ray tried separately for each of the three victims. One trial was to
begin on March 28, 2000, in Tierra Amarilla, for the kidnapping and
sexual assault of Cynthia V. Judge Mertz had made it difficult to use
all the evidence, according to Glatt and Fielder, as he suppressed Ray's
early interviews with the FBI and New Mexico State Police. He also
banned the media from the voir dire in which jury members were selected, and he would soon punch even more holes into the case.

David Parker Ray in court

Just after the jury selection, Ray apparently suffered a
heart attack and was rushed to a hospital in Las Cruces. He did have a
history of heart trouble, his attorney, Jeff Rein, said, but the
prosecutor believed he could also be trying to delay proceedings. If so,
he succeeded, as the judge postponed for another week. That led to more
legal delays, and a number of expert witnesses from the FBI were
excluded. Then, unexpectedly, Judge Mertz decided to start a different
trial, this one for the charge of the kidnapping and torture in 1996 of
the woman from Colorado. Although it was the case with the weakest
evidence, Mertz scheduled the trial for the end of May.Ray
was pleased with the delays, as if he were the one manipulating the
system. It seemed to make him feel powerful, especially when Mertz
excluded Ray's printed sheet of procedures for handling captives, and
all devices found in the trailer, as no one could prove they had been
there in 1996. While the prosecution had the victim's testimony about
what had been done, as well as the videotape, that did not mean that the
items she had seen were the same ones acquired during the 1999 search.On
May 7, Angelica M., the second victim to accuse Ray, died from
pneumonia at age 25. She'd become a drug addict, apparently unable to
get past her horrendous experience. Without her testimony that trial was
potentially off the books.A few days later, Cindy
Hendy, now age 40, formally received her sentence. Cynthia V. was
present in court and she rose to tell the woman who had helped to
terrorized her, "Rot in hell." Hendy was sent to the Women's
Correctional Center in Grants, New Mexico.On May 23,
jury selection for Ray's first trial finally got underway. In this
case, he faced twelve counts of sexual abuse, kidnapping and conspiracy.

Mixed Results

The victim, whose name was kept from the papers, took the
stand to testify what Ray had done to her. She had been 22 at the time.
She claimed that Ray had tied her up and kept her naked the entire time
she was at his trailer. However, her memory was murky, and she wasn't
able to convey very well that she'd clearly been held against her will.
She had probably been drugged, but that could not be proven. Although
the videotape was played for the jury and the victim insisted she would
never have agreed to this kind of treatment, she was not a very good
witness on her own behalf.On July 14, the papers
reported that Judge Mertz had declared a mistrial. Although the jurors
had deliberated for more than eight hours, they claimed they could not
come to an agreement about the twelve charges. Two of them could not
find Ray guilty of criminal assault. The jurors who had voted to acquit,
both in their 20s, had decided that the victim had not persuaded them
that Ray had kept her there against her will. "I was not positive he was
torturing her," one told a reporter for the New York Daily News. "There's a lot of people who enjoy rough sex."When
the accuser heard this news, she broke down in tears, unsure why the
jury had not believed her. What would it take to convince people that
she had not sought out this treatment, nor wanted it? She failed to
understand.Ray showed no visible reaction, but Rein
thought it was a sign that the jury had paid attention to the evidence,
or lack of it. Ray would be tried again, which meant the victim would
once more have to relive the ordeal.District
Attorney Ron Lopez gave a statement about his disappointment, but he may
not have been surprised. From the start he knew this had been their
weakest case and that the victim herself would be on trial. Young girls
who were out drinking were generally viewed with disapproval.
Nevertheless, Lopez and his team declared their intent to retry Ray at a
later date. "It's not over yet," he said. The state of New Mexico was
not letting this defendant off the hook.

The First Trial, Once Again

Jury selection began in November 2000 for the retrial, with
Jim Yontz as the prosecutor, but just a few days into it, Judge Mertz
died. That delayed the proceedings, as did the disqualification of two
more judges. Finally on April 9, 2001, the trial commenced, with Los
Lunas attorney, Kevin Sweazea, just appointed a judge, on the judge's
bench. The Court of Appeals had upheld Mertz's ruling about the items
found inadmissible, so Yontz once again had an uphill climb. But he was
more prepared to emphasize the nature of this victim's ordeal.The
same people testified, including the victim. She testified about her
abduction from a bar shortly after her marriage had fallen apart. She
described being led on a leash like a dog, from the large trailer to a
smaller one. Her feet were placed into stirrups, and she was strapped
into place, whereupon Ray began to insert dildos of different sizes into
her. She wanted to leave, she said, and she heard Ray lock and unlock
the door many times. She was given nothing to eat or drink.Ray's
new attorney, Lee McMillian, asked her why it had taken three years for
her to come forward with this story. He also hammered her with
differences in her testimony from the previous trial. She could only
explain that her memory was hazy. He suggested it was all a fantasy that
she'd made up. A psychotherapist, David Spencer testified, just as he
had in the first trial. He had been treating the victim, and her sleep
disorders were consistent with post-traumatic stress disorder.Ray's
audiotape and the videotape he'd made of what he had done to this
victim were played in court. The victim cried as she watched, but the
jury members showed no reaction. It seemed possible that they might be
inclined, like the first jury, to acquit.The defense
called no witnesses, because an expert on sadomasochistic psychology
was disallowed. This person supposedly would have addressed the nature
of consensual sexual fantasy play that involved the rituals that Ray had
used. Ray said that he'd wanted to testify on his own behalf, but his
attorney had advised against it. He vowed that if he was convicted, he
would fight it all the way to the Supreme Court. "If you're innocent,
you're innocent," he said. "I am innocent."The jury
convicted him, nevertheless, on all twelve charges for that case, so he
gave an interview to an Albuquerque television station, KOB-TV to offer
his side."I feel raped," he said, with some irony.
"I got pleasure out of a woman getting pleasure. I did what they wanted
me to do." To explain the sadistic tapes he had created, he said, "It
was a source of entertainment for me to create these tapes. That's why
there was a disclaimer at the beginning of the tape stating that it was
for adult entertainment only."With one conviction
behind him, Ray now faced the possibility of worse yet to come, and that
he might spend the rest of his life in jail.

Abrupt Endings

In June, Ray's second trial began. Again, he started up with
claims of innocence, but within a week, he had reached an agreement in a
plea deal. He said he was willing to plead guilty to the charges in
exchange for cutting a deal for his daughter: she would receive five
years of probation. To his mind, her freedom was the greatest gift he
could give her.
In this deal, Ray received more than 223 years in
prison. "I can only be sorry for what I did," he said enigmatically.
McMillian said that there may have been another reason that Ray accepted
the plea deal: "Every soul longs for redemption. The guy has the desire
to do something good." Ray even made a statement to the effect that the
time in his cell would allow him an opportunity to reflect and get
right with God.
Glenda Ray pleaded no contest to a kidnapping
charge and received a sentence of nine years for second-degree
kidnapping. Six years were suspended, and she was to serve five on
probation.

Lt. Rob Shilling describes how Ray used the equipment on his victims

But Ray soon appealed his sentence. He said that his plea had
not been voluntary, and that his "exhausted mind was clouded by his ill
health, the medications, and the pressure applied by his legal counsel."
A three-judge panel rejected the appeal, stating that Ray had been on a
normal dose of medication at the time he made the deal, and he had not
complained about undue pressure from his attorney. He also had no expert
to testify that the medication had confused him. Thus, the deal
remained in place, but he wouldn't be serving much of the sentence.
On
May 28, 2002, just as he was about to be transferred to the general
prison population at the Lea County Correctional Facility, David Ray
Parker suffered a genuine heart attack and died. He was 62.

Book cover: Slow Death

In November that year, the state police officially opened the
Toy Box to the public, in hope that renewed media attention might help
to identify other victims and suspects. Inside was a poster that said,
"Satan's Den," and a sign that stated, "Bondage Room." The obstetrical
table was still there, complete with clamps, leg stretchers, electrical
wires, straps, and chains. "Ray had devised two sharp hooks," wrote one
reporter, "that were apparently designed to prevent his victims from
getting up or resisting electric shocks." Inside a steel cabinet were
numerous surgical instruments, and near it was the coffin-shaped box
used to terrorize and contain victims. Ray's meticulous log was also
available, showing how he kept records of what he did to each person. To
ensure that no one escaped, he had rigged an elaborate alarm system and
had written reminders to secure all collars and straps before leaving.
With
Ray dead, the investigation fizzled out. No bodies were ever found, no
possible victims were identified, and no suspicious deaths loosely
associated with Ray were solved. Nevertheless, many sources peg him as a
serial killer — a smart one.
According to Jim Fielder in Slow Death, both surviving victims went on to form relationships and start families.

Rest assured, this weak little pecker is burning in hell as you read this...flames licking his private parts and slowing sizzling each layer of skin as he screams and no one cares...it's called KARMA and no one escapes it, what goes around, comes around.

His daughter didn't hardly get punished at all. Sick bitch. Those women deserve a special place in hell, being the same sex as the victim they had more insight into the terror and pain and humiliation the victims felt.

God, his daughter looks like her horrifically ugly father with a cheap wig on. May he rot in hell. I am thinking she may be the result of multiple generations of imbreeding. I hope someone snatches those ugly giant glasses off her deformed face and stabs her with the glass. I HATE THESE PEOPLE!